For girls who play high school basketball, college players have always been their heroes.

“I dreamed about going to Tennessee,” says Ashley Sandstead, a Buffalo Grove High School standout now entering her second year as assistant varsity coach at Stevenson.

When she was in high school, “the WNBA still wasn’t very big.”

Now, she said, “I think it’s great the girls have Sky players” as role models.

First of all, nice shoutout to my alma mater, Stevenson High School! After saying great things about the WNBA and the Sky, the article launches into how tickets are too expensive, the timing of the season is horrible, no one wants to watch bball in the summer and how young players prefer the college ballers as role models. Weird article.

Babcock-McGraw: There are a lot of new faces on the 2010 roster. What is the chemistry like?

Stender: It’s been the best early chemistry feel we’ve had in the entire five years. The dynamic among these athletes is really positive. Everyone is happy, there are good friendships brewing, there’s good trust, great respect for each other’s skills. There’s not any kind of big ego thing going on.

This group of 11 we have right now has the potential to have some really magical chemistry moments.

I really love the talent we have and I love their attitudes toward each other.

This group does seem to have better chemistry that any of our teams in the past. But we’re 0-4 so uh, ya know, good team chemistry doesn’t win games…

Babcock-McGraw: How is the Sky doing from a business perspective heading into its fifth season?

Stender: We’re very well capitalized. We don’t have cash flow issues. We don’t have that kind of stress that some start-up teams might have. We’re in this for the long term. (Sky owner) Michael (Alter), me, the rest of our investors, we are very, very committed to this. It’s not a fad. It’s not going to shoot straight up. It’s a building thing. We have a plan and it’s a long-term plan.

Can I tell you that we are meeting our (original) plan? I can’t. We started with a plan that was much more aggressive. But that doesn’t change our ability or our confidence in where we’re going.

We’ve changed some major things (since last season) that we feel are going to all come together soon and really help us move forward.

When I read this part, I zoned in on “we aren’t having cash flow issues” and “we’re in this for the long term.” That’s awesome to hear. I guess things would be perfect if we could just, uh, win some games…

Babcock-McGraw: Can the suburbs be the fan gold mine that the Sky is looking for? What are you expecting in attendance?

Stender: We averaged 3,900 fans last year. If we average about 4,500 this year, we’d be thrilled with that. That would be really healthy growth for us and we’re optimistic that can happen.

We got great (season ticket) renewal. We have about 70 percent of our season ticket holders who were at the UIC Pavilion coming out to Allstate with us. We’re very encouraged about that. And we have a lot of new season ticket holders. We’re about 30 percent higher in new season tickets versus where we were a year ago at this time.

Capacity (lower bowl only) is 7,000 for us and we already have some games where we’ll be sold out. That’s the positive momentum we need.

I’m guessing the sold-out games will likely be LA and Phoenix. Averaging 4,500 per game sounds like a great number to me.

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* A R T I C L E*A night for Starla — Sky brings attention to Williams’ legacy (Daily Herald) — I saw a few articles about this over the course of the few weeks leading up to the home opener. A sad, but uplifting story. If I’m not mistaken, at the game it was announced that $750 was raised for the Starla memorial scholarship. Great job, Sky!

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* A R T I C L E *Night out with Chicago Sky(Timeout Chicago) — Nifty little article about the NY transplants out and about in Chi-town…

Christon, on the other hand, is a self-proclaimed glamour girl toting a Gucci handbag and 18-inch ringlet hairdo. They’re polar opposites. “I love hair and makeup. I’ve even taken courses on both, and I sew in my own tracks,” says Christon about her DIY weave. Half an hour later, her makeup is done.

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* V I D E O*I haven’t been linking to them in a timely manner, but Erin Thorn continues to make cool videos in her “ET’s Video Home” series. In Episode III, Erin recaps the cool “Sky Cares” event and talks to Coach White about pre-season and regular season…

“Missing my show, like missing free throws, is unacceptable.”

Great line, Erin! Episode IV is equally entertaning, as ET talks with the two rookies. First of all, I didn’t know Abi has a blog weekly blog on the Chicago Tribune site. I’m gonna have to go find that. Oh, and Jia screwing around in the background in the beginning is hilarious. Dominique Canty even makes an entertaining appearance in this episode…rookies get no respect!